Sphagnum is a genus of between 151 and 350 species of mosses commonly called sphagnum, or peat moss, due to its prevalence in wet habitats, where it contributes to the formation of peat bogs and mires. A distinction is sometimes made between “sphagnum moss”, “sphagnum peat moss” and “sphagnum peat”, wherein the “sphagnum moss” refers to the live moss growing on top of a peat bog while the “sphagnum peat moss” (American usage) and “sphagnum peat” (British usage) refer to moss slowly decaying underneath of the “sphagnum moss”. Decayed, dried sphagnum moss has the name of peat or peat moss, which is used as a primary growing media of soil conditioner for cultivating orchids in Taiwan to increase the soil's capacity to hold water and nutrients by increasing capillary forces and cation exchange capacity. Currently, most sphagnum moss used in Taiwan is imported from Republic of Chile, New Zealand and Mainland China in annual amount about 1,100 tons. Owing to mass picking and collecting as well as flood ravage and natural ecocline associated with environmental changes, the annual production capacity is gradually decreased in recent years with result in soaring cost. Moreover, the natural sphagnum moss is seriously infected by Fusarium oxysporum or becomes a carrier of blight because it is usually picked and collected together with planted soil so that the quality thereof becomes unstable non-uniformity, which also affects the quality of the orchids cultivated by such bad natural sphagnum moss.
Therefore, an artificial peat moss fabricated by manufacturing technology of synthetic fiber or semi-synthetic fiber is emerged for coping with this marketing issue with features of high production efficiency, uniform quality and free from infection or carrier of blight so, that it becomes a trend to replace the natural sphagnum moss. However, all the sphagnum mosses of synthetic fiber or semi-synthetic fiber belong to polymers of polyester or polyamide by conventional process of viscose rayon, cuprammonium rayon, acetate or the like, which discharges a considerable amount polluted materials other than involving very complicated procedure with time-wasting slow production speed and soaring manufacturing cost. Moreover, the overall accumulated amount of all the polymers of polyester or polyamide, which are non-biodegradeable material, is direct proportional to the consumed amount of such kind of sphagnum mosses so that another economic issue is incurred by the increasing amount of accumulated wastes of used polyester or polyamide.
Having realized and addressed foregoing drawbacks for the conventional artificial peat moss of synthetic fiber or semi-synthetic fiber, the inventor of the present invention takes advantages of the successful technology in title of “processing method of the natural cellulose fiber with feature of enhanced antifungal, antiseptic and deodorant capability”, which have been granted Taiwan patent in patent number of 1330208, and USA patent in patent number of U.S. Pat. No. 8,092,732 respectively, in addition to innovative idea for working out the present invention. The producing method for the artificial peat moss from natural cellulose fiber of the present invention proves itself that it meet requirement of growing media for cultivating orchids with features of production speed much higher than that of the conventional artificial peat moss of synthetic fiber or semi-synthetic fiber.